Saving masks for later use

- Have you ever spent a long time painting a mask,only to find that you wish you could've come backand use it again.Usually, when you clear a mask, it's goneand you can't get it back.However, if you know that you might need it again,there are some things you can do to get a mask backeven after it's removed.Let's see how it works.For this particular trick to work,you need to have UVs laid out on the model.Let's see if this model has UVs,let's go down to UV map and you can see thatthe Delete UV in the Morph UV buttons are grayed out,so this does not have UVs currently.

So the layout UV is we wanna go tothe lowest sub-division model,let's go to geometry and drag this downto the lowest level and now we can go to Z plugin,UV Master and just click Unwrap to do a quickand dirty UV unwrap.All right, let's see what this did,we'll go back to UV map and now you can see itthat these are not grayed out.Let's click Morph UV, okay, so you can seethat there is UV layout now.

This model could be textured.Go ahead and click Morph UV againto bring that back to normal.Now, I'm gonna go up my sub-division levels,I'm just gonna hit d a few timesand let's start painting a mask.I'm just gonna zoom in here,let's say that we want to mask out the eyes and the nose,maybe some different parts.So I'm just hold down Control and mask this section out.Now, let's say that we wanted to apply some effectsat everything else but not to the eyes,so we wanna have that masked.

And let's say maybe we wanna mask out the nose,I'm not gonna take too much timeto be super precise with this,if you wanna erase the mask,you can hold down Control and Alt at the same time,clean that up a little bit.And then just for demonstration sake,what I'm gonna do is draw a really fine maskjust to demonstrate what this is going to look like.So let's say if I wanna mask some sort of patterninto the eyebrows, we could do that.

So let's say this mask took us a long time to createand we might wanna clear it but then come back to it.We don't wanna have to spend the time,re-masking all these stuff againespecially if it's a very precise patternthat we've masked out.In order to save the mask,we're going to create an Alpha Map.An Alpha Map is kinda like a texture mapbut it's not for color, it's for storing databecause an Alpha Map is a bitmap just like a texture,we need to set a resolution for it.So let's go in to our UV map and let's set a resolution.

Now this map could be by default 1,024 pixels on each sidebut you could set it to lower or higher resolutionor you could drag this slider so it's where we want.So how do you know what resolution you should set this to?Well, one good rule of thumb is to look at the polycountfor the object, so it's got active pointsof little over one million, usually if the active pointsis about one million, I like to set the UV map sizeto about 1,000.If the active points were about 500,000,then I will set this to about 500.

If there were two million, I would set this to two k map,four million at four k map,if there was eight million, I will set this upall the way up to about, an eight k map, so on and so forth.However, you can always just create an alphaand see how it looksand if it doesn't have enough resolution,you could always just increase the sizeand then generate it again.Okay, so I'm just gonna leave this on the one k map.Now that we've set the resolution,we need to actually create the alpha from the masking.So let's go to the Masking sub-paletteand click Create Alpha, so what this didis it created a new bitmap, here in the Alpha Channelthat stores that mask as a black and white image.

So now what we could do is just clear this mask,I wanna hit Control+A to mask everythingand then I'm just Control+Click in an open areato invert the mask which will unmask everything.So now you could go, do other things,you could paint other masks,you could then create an alpha for that.It's kinda hard to see, if we mouse over,we could get a bigger of it.But now, we've got various alpha stored,we've got the first one that we've made,we've got the second one that we've made,so we could come back to the first oneand then turn that back into a mask.

So now that we've loaded this mask into the Alpha Channel,let's go back to the Masking sub-palette,open up Mask by Alpha and click Mask by Alpha,now you could see this mask nowlooks slightly more pixelated than it was before,we might have wanna to actually pick a resolutionthat was higher than a one k map.So what you might actually wanna dois just estimate the size that it should beand then go one size larger.Let's actually do that.I'm gonna hit Control+Z to undo a few times,so we can get back to this original mask.

Let's go to UV map and let's set this to a two k map insteadand then we'll go back to masking,create Alpha, now let's clear this mask,I'm gonna hit Control+A and then Control+Clickon an open area and we'll go back to our Alphaand you can see now, in the width and the height,it's telling us it's a two k map.So let's go ahead and mask by alpha againto bring this back, okay, you can seethat it's a little bit sharper,it's not quite as pixelated.So now, we're actually capturing the full resolutionof that mask.

Okay, great, so now you know how to turna mask into an alpha so you can save it for later use.This comes in very handy so you don't have to repainta complicated mask every time you wanna use it.

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Author

Updated

12/6/2016

Released

5/24/2016

Are you ready to take your ZBrush-ing to the next level? In this weekly series, ZBrush artist Ryan Kittleson shares his personal approach on how to make ZBrush work for you. Ryan demonstrates how to set hot keys so that ZBrush operates more like your other favorite software. He shows you how to customize the interface, so that the features you use the most are placed front and center, and how optimize the setup of a custom scene to achieve maximum workflow efficiency. He demonstrates how to create macros to simplify complex and repetitive tasks into single-click solutions. This series is designed to help you go from spending time fussing with software to having more time to make great, new things with ZBrush!